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Fedora 12 LXDE Spin available for download

Sorry it took so long. While the actual problems were solved within 2 days, it took a little longer to create the new ISO images. FESCo, the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, had to decide how to proceed with the new images. The decision was scheduled for last weeks FESCo meeting, but due to Thanksgiving and the holidays the meeting was canceled. Instead, we voted in Trac, but as you all know a ticket system is not as fast as a real time IRC meeting.

After that Jesse composed the new images and we needed to test them to make sure we don’t hit any bugs again. Testing was positive and now we have the new images available for download at

Why does the spin not use compcache to lower memory requirements of at least the installer? Attempted a install with 256mb in virtualbox…gui won’t work…..ran the installer manually as root in text but it seems several of the steps the gui does get left out….the text based install didn’t boot into slim…just to shell prompt. Fedora lxde doesn’t have it’s own forum? You have to guess whether something is a fedora or a lxde or just a spin issue?

First of all you need to understand that a spin is just a flavor of Fedora, but not a distro of it’s own. This means that we have to use stock Fedora packages without any changes. If modifications are done, they are done in the livecd initscript, so the installed packages can still be verified by rpm.

This means, that if you want compcache support in the installer, you have to file a bug against anaconda in Red Hat’s bugzilla. Nice idea actually, but I cannot do such far reaching change in the spin (and wouldn’t even make sense to do it because the feature is not spin specific)

When you do a text install, then the installer skips a few steps (as documented in the F11 release notes) and assumes you don’t have X available. Therefor it only boots into runlevel 3.

Regarding you last question: What difference does it make? All bugs belong into Bugzilla, no matter if it’s a Fedora, LXDE or spin only issue. Support happens through the usual channels. Of course you need to decide whether to contact Fedora or LXDE, but you will need to make this decision with every problem you have, no matter what package.

Last but not least: If you are really spare on RAM, do an minimal install from DVD or netinstall with a custom package set and LXDE. You wont get the applications I chose for the spin, but this might explain why your scenario is not the target audience of the spin: People with really limited hardware will do a custom install anyway because they might not even want this or that app from the spin.

When you ask a question, please provide the necessary details that people need in order to help you. What does “not booting up” mean? When does the server stop to boot? Do you see any error messages and if what are they? I don’t think you need to reinstall your server, but of course we need more details in order to help you.

First: many thanks to Christoph and the Fedora Project team for the LXDE spin. F12-LXDE.i686 is installed and working well on a VM here. Haven’t yet gotten around to testing on “hard iron”. I’ve tried not to goof too much with the default package suite and setup, in order to assess the spin objectively and fairly as it is presented.

A couple small niggles/suggestions:
> The default web browser is now (F12) Midori. If Midori matures well before F13, it would indeed be a suitable alternative for FireFox et al, considering it’s (presumed) lighter footprint/resource consumption. However, I found the current version to be almost unusable, and ended up installing another (Opera, as it turns out, but that’s just my personal choice, I realize Opera cannot be used in an “official” spin).
> I realize that keeping the ISO small is a priority, but the exclusion of OpenJDK and matching browser plug-in was a surprise. I would suggest inclusion of these in future.

These are very minor issues, and (for me) easily rectified. Overall: I continue to be highly impressed with Fedora LXDE spin, and it will remain my preferred choice for VMs and older hardware.

For me midori works quite nice, the only problem I have is that the openjdk plugin currently is not supported (this was the reason to leave it out for now). The midori development is very fast and I am optimistic that it will be fully usable by F13. If not, I might consider switching to Firefox, although I don’t really like this idea.